Doctors Welcome Decision On Treacherous Temperature Case

MEDIA RELEASE: Dr George Laking, for
OraTaiao: The New Zealand Climate and Health
Council

Doctors Welcome Decision On Treacherous
Temperature Case

The New Zealand Climate and
Health Council welcomes Justice Geoffrey Venning's rejection
of the New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust's
(NZCSET) case against the National Institute of Water and
Atmospheric Research (NIWA).

Spokesperson Dr George Laking
says the medical profession recognises human-induced climate
change as the number one threat to health this century.
Health risks of climate change start with injury from
heatwaves and storms, more tropical illnesses, and
ultimately threaten collapse of food supplies and political
insecurity from crop failure, coastal inundation and ocean
acidification. Global food prices are already rising with
the extreme drought affecting half of the United
States.

"Yet it has been incredibly frustrating for us as
medical scientists to see political action on climate change
repeatedly obstructed by groups such as the NZ Climate
Science Coalition and their wealthy backers, apologists for
the tobacco industry and the fossil fuel and mining
industry."

Dr Laking says climate sceptics have pretended
there is scientific doubt where it does not exist. “They
are no different from tobacco company executives, who as
recently as 1994 testified that “nicotine is not
addictive”.

Ironically, NZCSET is part of the New
Zealand Climate Science Coalition, which links with Big
Tobacco. Tobacco giant Philip Morris funds the Heartland
Institute in the United States, which funds climate deniers
worldwide – including the NZ Climate Science Coalition.
“Having tried to confuse and deny the evidence with
tobacco, they are now doing the same for our destabilising
climate, through people like the New Zealand Climate Science
Coalition. Still peddling lies that kill, they are delaying
action essential to protect human health”, says Dr
Laking.

The artificial climate of pseudoscepticism has
made it very hard for the New Zealand public to understand
how urgently we must move to a low carbon economy. Yet there
are real health gains from low carbon measures including
sustainable transport and local production of food and
renewable energy.

"It is our responsibility to decarbonise
the economy right now" ends Dr Laking. "The technologies
already exist. We owe it to the health of current and
future generations. New Zealanders should see Justice
Venning's ruling as a wake-up call, and not be lulled into
complacency by the fossil fuel industry and its
helpers".

Background
notesDr George Laking is a medical oncologist
(i.e. cancer specialist) and health economist based in
Auckland. He is an Executive Board and founding member of
OraTaiao: The NZ Climate and Health
Council.

About
climate and healthClimate change is widely
recognised by world health authorities and leading medical
journals to be the biggest global health threat of the 21st
century and this is well-accepted by New Zealand medical
professional bodies. Major threats—both direct and
indirect—to global health from climate change will occur
through water and food insecurity, threats to shelter and
human settlements, population displacement and migration,
extreme climatic events, changing patterns of disease, risks
to security (e.g. war), and loss of economic
potential.

Conversely, addressing climate change is an
opportunity to improve population health and reduce
inequities. In New Zealand, well designed policies to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions can bring about substantial health
co-benefits including reductions in heart disease, cancer,
obesity, Type 2 diabetes, respiratory disease, and motor
vehicle injuries, and improvements in mental health. These
substantial health gains are possible through strategies
such as transport infrastructure redesign to encourage
active travel, healthy eating (including reduced red meat
and animal fat consumption), and improving home
insulation.

About OraTaiao: The New Zealand
Climate & Health Council
www.orataiao.org.nzOraTaiao: The New
Zealand Climate and Health Council is an incorporated
society comprising over 150 senior doctors and other health
professionals concerned about climate change impacts on
health and health services. Leading medical bodies
throughout the world are saying that politicians must heed
health effects of climate change, doctors must speak out,
and doctors demand their politicians be decisive, listen to
the clear facts and act now. OraTaiao: The New Zealand
Climate and Health Climate is part of this international
movement. It has published a number of articles about
climate change and health in peer-reviewed medical journals,
which can be found on its website www.orataiao.org.nz.

The
Council’s messages include:• Climate change is a
real and urgent threat to the health and wellbeing of New
Zealanders.• New Zealand must be an active partner in
global cooperation to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas
emissions to 350ppm CO2equivalents by:o rapidly
halving our own emissions by 2020;o paying our fair
share of international investment in a global
future.• New Zealand can, and must, respond to climate
change in ways that improve population health, accord with
Te Tiriti o Waitangi, create a more equitable, just and
resilient society, and promote a healthier economy within
ecological resource
limits.

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